Paper Training
by Beeblebabe
Summary: On paperwork and puppies. Kurenai's team. No spoilers.


When she had been a young girl dreaming of her exciting life as a shinobi, her fantasies had never included paperwork. When she passed through the academy and rose through the ranks, the thought had still not occurred to her. The bureaucracy of missions was something for a sensei to handle. Now, though, she /was/ a sensei, with forms to fill out, and a pencil that was going blunt. 

It was, if nothing else, a nice day to be spent doing basically nothing, Kurenai figured. It was the lazy sort of pre-summer day that meant most people were too busy enjoying themselves to call for missions, so she'd given her kids some training exercises to do (Hinata needed the most work on her physical skills, so she'd entrusted her with Shino to spar, and Kiba, after his lazy performance on their last mission, had been given the frustrating task of attempting to crack walnuts with his chakra) and left them in the practice field. She found a comfortable tree in the shade that was still in earshot (if she listened now, she could hear the sound of an attack being blocked, the indistinct low murmur of Shino's correction and the wavering of Hinata's response, and the explosions of Kiba's profanities) and settled in to the work she'd been ignoring. 

Kurenai pulled her hair up off her neck into a rough bun and speared in through with the blunt pencil. She reached for the bag that she'd brought the paperwork in to see if she had another pencil, or a sharpener, or if she'd just have to resort to getting out a kunai and doing this the old fashioned way in order to keep bubbling in mission codes (D-659: removal of squirrel's nest from attic; D-942: clogged disposal; D-499; removal of spider from bathroom). The inside of her satchel only revealed the other half of the forms she had left to complete. She sighed and closed her eyes, letting her head thump back into the trunk of the tree. Maybe she could put off the forms a little while longer... 

A faint rustling in the grass to her right made her eyes snap open and her body instantly becoming alert and ready. She relaxed back against the rough bark when she saw the source of the sound, the pale-furred dog sniffing through the long grass. 

"Akamaru." She held out her hand, palm exposed, when the dog didn't look up. "Akamaru, did you get bored with Kiba?" Akamaru's head lifted at the sound of his master's name, and he tromped his way over to sniff at Kurenai's offered fingers. After enough sniffs to determine her identity as a friend, he set into enthusiastically licking her hand. "He can't be very good company," she said with a soft laugh as she pulled away from the greeting to scratch behind the puppy's ears instead. "Don't tell him I said this, but I gave him an impossible task. His level of chakra control won't be enough to break the shell for a long time." The dog blinked up at her as she snorted out a small laugh. "Particularly at the rate he's going." 

Akamaru seemed to decide to swear his promise not to betray the truth to his young master by climbing into Kurenai's lap. "Good boy. Ow, hey, watch it, mister." She picked up Akamaru's paws and moved them away so he would no longer be standing directly on her crotch. The puppy, apparently oblivious to this handling, contented himself with sniffing instead. "Perverted little guy, aren't you? Going to go back and give Kiba all the juicy details?" Akamaru looked up again at the name, long ears perking up, and began to wag his tail vigorously. Kurenai laughed a little and let go of the dog's forepaws to scratch him behind the ears again. "I'll let you get away with it this time, since you're cuter than he is." 

This compliment was rewarded with another dose of doggy affection, Akamaru standing on his hind legs with his front paws on her chest to lick her cheek. Kurenai wrinkled her nose, but couldn't help but laugh as she pulled him away again. "Thank you, thank you, but I'm seeing someone." She picked up Akamaru fully and placed him down seated in her lap. "Now relax, please. I have work to do." The puppy snorted a little and shook his head, making his ears flop comically for a few seconds, then settled down to rest in the center of his lap. Head on one thigh, tail thumping lightly on the other, he seemed to doze off in short order. Kurenai gave him another light scratch on the back of the neck, and with a small sigh, reached back for her pack. There /was/ another pencil in there after all. Back to paperwork... 

After a few minutes of filling in bubbles (D-809; picking up newspapers for vacationing client), another soft sound in the grass drew her attention. The dog in her lap let out a sleepy sigh as she looked up to see... Akamaru. Sniffing after a dragonfly. 

Two things rapidly occurred to her. One, that she hadn't heard Kiba's sounds of frustration in a long while, and two, that if she was this stupid, they never should have made her a jounin in the first place. 

She stood up, tossing the "dog" in her lap out to land with a startled whimper. He looked up at her, then to the puppy calmly eating an insect beside him, and his tail went between his legs. Before he could bolt, Kurenai's hands formed the seal of an illusion cancellation jutsu. 

"/Akamaru/!" Kiba growled as the smoke cleared, leaving him sitting in the grass in front of his sensei. "Weren't you /listening/ when I explained the plan?" As much as a dog could shrug noncommittally, Akamaru did so and took another bite of his dragonfly. Kiba picked him up by the scruff of his neck. "She's gonna /kill/ us!" 

Kurenai, being a trained and professional ninja, could manage to find her voice in an embarrassing situation such as this. Keeping herself from blushing, however, was something she was not yet experienced enough to have mastered. "No, Kiba," she said, the sharp edge in her voice making the boy back up a little on the ground. "Just you. I hope you enjoyed yourself, because that's the last time you ever get away with that." 

"H-hey, come on, sensei..." Kiba pulled Akamaru close to his chest, as though the dog could save him now. "/You/ were fooled, so you gotta admit, it was some good transformation practice!" 

"Yes," Kurenai said as she pulled the pencil from her hair and held it ready between her fingers. "I'll give you /plenty/ of practice." It was a shame the thing was blunt, but it would do. 

She reminded herself to not complain of paperwork again. Things could always be worse.


End file.
